callsigns

Most airlines do not have their name as the callsign

To the contrary, most airlines do have their names as part of their call sign, It is usually the company name, flight number, and if appropriate, the word "heavy" to notify ATC they are above a specified weight for additional spacing.

I can't help with "Citrus" but I don't think all British Airways flights are identified by "Speedbird". If I am not mistaken, that was the call sign for thier flights on the Concorde to identify to ATC that it would be a super-sonic flight.

Company names on callsigns are common for scheduled commercial flights. For most other flights, the call sign is the aircraft make and tail number of the first call and usually the last three characters of the tail number on subsequent calls. For some flights, at least in the US, local ATC offices can assign other call signs to help identify special purpose flights.

For istance, when I flew for a large law enforcement agencies, our helicopter flights were identified with the call sign ASTREA and an assigned number. ASTREA stood for Aerial Support To Regional Enforcement Agencies and was also a Greek (?) Goddess of flight. Our fixed wing operations were also designated as ASTREA when we were flying for tactical reasons but we used the Make-Tail number call sign when we were flying for transport.

In the same area, the helicopters and airplanes operated by the various radio and television stations were identified by the word SKY and a number. These call signs were preassigned as were transponder codes so that when we took off, we did not even have to make a radio call to ATC. They would see our transponder and we would, without an initial call, get a call from ATC such as "ASTREA-three, radar contact, one mile south of the reservoir".

In the US, at least, aircraft that are on life saving missions can be assigned the temporary call sign "Lifeguard and a number. That allows ATC to identify such flights and give them priority handling.

Military call signs are an entirely different ball of wax and I don't know enough about them to discuss them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airline_call_sign
🙂

I can think of quite a few operators off hand that do not use their name in the callsign. BA mainline being one of them "Speedbird" is used as suggested. First Choice were "Jetset", My Travel "Kestrel", Scot Airways "Suckling", Thomas Cook "Globe", British European "Jersey" (were previously Jersey European though!). There are many.....just depends what the bosses want to use!

speedbird started off as the callsign for concorde, BA later adopted it for all their aircraft.

as for military the is a book that you can get for all their callsigns. They assign different callsigns to different units and aircraft. Aircraft spotters that sit there with UHF/VHF scanners normally get hold of the callsign books to know what type of aircraft they are listening to.

the 'speedbird' was the name of BA's logo on its old livery
➡ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speedbird

ATC keeps calling me SkyWest in my Southwest 737! It drives me nuts.